Fist First
by GutterSnail
Summary: Battling our inner demons can seem a fruitless pursuit at times, but for one family losing the battle could mean losing everything you love. Raphael learns this the hard way when an accident in the dojo has Leonardo prepared to expel him from the team. Including his own family.
1. Prologue

Leonardo remembered every detail of the blow that caused the crimson stain on splinter's hand painted carpet. The rolling in his stomach as he watched a glistening fist launch hard and fast at an undeserving opponent. The dreadful _snapping_ of calloused knuckles colliding into a disjointed jawbone from below as four whirling shuriken struck the opposer's chest with a satisfying _shlick_. The distinct_ clicking _sound when the neck _popped_ backwards hard_,_ along with the rest of him.

The body rag-dolled and toppled as if it had been plowed by a run-away battering ram. Worse - a run away Raphael.

Leonardo remembered the silence that fell upon the dojo in that moment. No one dared to interrupt the daunting quietude that had made itself their guest. This, however long it felt to him, was in reality quite brief.

Almost all at once, the family scrambled from their posts and gathered around the scene of the crime in a mad rush for answers. The look in the proprietor's eyes as the jury drew their final conclusions - _judged_ _him guilty_ - brought out the beast beneath his skin. He argued with the nearest as if the string had been pulled and snapped not by two hands alone, but four. Leo didn't listen. His younger brother's crumpled body was a heap of limbs and bloody distractions with no definable sources. No words could draw his attention away, however cruel they were.

Leonardo remembered kneeling down by the head of his little brother and pulling the pale and injured body into his waiting arms with little trouble. The listless form did not protest the sudden movement, causing Leo's anxieties to skyrocket. Reaching out with a shaky hand, Leo pinched one of the many shuriken embedded in his brother's chest between two of his broad and lengthy fingers. He pulled harder than he thought would be necessary - felt wrong for having touched it in the first place, but he couldn't bear the sight any longer. His lengthily effort was rewarded with an unnerving squish and a steady stream of sanguine.

His brother didn't even flinch.

He dropped the bloodied metal onto the tatami mats below, then reached for another shuriken. He thought better of it, and instead moved to gently stroke the sweat beaten brow of their youngest. The eldest cooed softly upon deaf ears.

The flurry of insults behind him became more and more intense as argument advanced to childish pushing and shoving. Yet, despite the quickly growing tempers, no amount of anger surpassed that of a grief-stricken Master Splinter.

"Michelangelo!"

Raphael did not remember every detail that caused the crimson stain on his father's hand painted carpet, but these were the few things that he would never forget.

* * *

><p><strong>AUTHOR'S NOTE:<strong>

**I know this concept isn't entirely original but I have some sick writer's block to work through. Future chapters will start taking spins and twist because I wanna experiment with ideas and this is my way of learning more about the characters and how they would react. I have no fucking clue what I'm doing. U _ U**


	2. Don't Be Dramatic

"Do you realize what you've done, or do you honestly believe that none of this is your fault?"

Cradling his head in one hand, elbow balanced on a padded knee, Raphael refrained from rolling his eyes at the question. It was a trap. Answering would put him at risk of another lecture, and it was no mystery that Leo had a few wringers up his sleeve. The blue bastard could probably go all night.

"Well," Leonardo looked to his red banded brother with the same pompous resolve he's had for an hour now. "Are you going to say anything?"

He wasn't. Leo wanted to know if he felt bad, wanted confirm his brother understood what he did. That he realized his mistake and felt really, really sorry for it. Well, he did. But there was no fucking way he was going to give Leo that satisfaction. Mr. high and mighty didn't need to know about the guilt gnawing at his soul like some wile squirrel. Though he would vastly prefer giving birth to another squirrelanoid than carry the dread of his misdeed.

"No."

"'No' what, Raphael?"

Raph leaned away from the dining table and allowed his resting arm to drop as he righted himself to stand. "Are we finished here, Fearless?"

"Oh, thankth god!" Mikey's voice carried in from the living room. The relieved outburst muffled by the squeal of rubber on asphalt and maniacal technobabble. "Are you guyths gonna shut up now?"

"Shut up, Mikey," Donatello needed to shout in order to be heard over the TV set. His yelling closing in on the lecture zone as the teenager made his way to the kitchen. "Nobody wants to hear your whiny lisp."

"Thatsth whath happensth when somethone knocksth out your pheeth!"

Donatello lifted the curtain separating the kitchen and turned the corner with an amused smile pulling on his lips. Leo noticed this first, while Raphael noticed the bloody rag in his brother's open hand. Smiling wasn't as noticeable as red, and there was an awful lot of red on his hands.

"How is he?" Leo asked, raising an eye ridge at the cloth. Donatello refused eye contact as he crossed their path to the sink and rung the bloodstained rag under the tap.

"Besides the bad jokes and an unstoppable craving for Health Ledger movies, he's pulling through fine. There's only so much that I can do for his teeth, though, and the swelling will get worse before it gets better." Donatello twisted the wet rag once before turning off the water and carefully draping the used cloth over the nozzle. The rag dripped a diluted shade of pink into the drain with a rhythmic _drip, drip, drip._

Raphael wanted to leave.

"And the shuriken?"

Donatello shuddered involuntarily at the mention of shuriken, then leaned over the metal sink, his green fingers curling under the wooden counter top. His voice was barely a whisper. "The impact caused minor fracturing, and Mikey is already complaining about the pain. I've given him pain killers, but he'll be under a lot of stress for a couple of months."

"Is there a way you can fix it? Epoxy maybe?"

"It isn't like fixing a shell, Leo, the plastron is softer than that. Epoxy won't work, and I'd rather not have to put bolts in my brother."

"Then don't."

"I wish it was that simple." Donatello leaned away from the sink and turned to look at his two older brothers. Particularly Raph, who was currently inching out the kitchen doorway. "What's the matter, Raph?" He froze. "Can't handle hearing about what you did or are you that eager for a good nights sleep?"

"Listen here, Einstein," Raphael managed through clenched teeth and a burst of confidence. He didn't meet his Brother's eye. "I know what I did was wrong, okay. So did Mikey when he started joking around like some freaking comedian. I warned him that-"

"-that you would try to kill him?" Donatello interrupted. "I get angry at Mikey, too, but I don't keep the threats I make."

That was just the incentive he needed to meet Donnie's glare head on. "Stop putting words in my mouth, Don."

"Or what?" Donatello pushed away from the sink and folded his arms across his chest. "You'll knock out my teeth?"

"Enough!"

Splinter's cane knocked the tile floor, instantly creating silence throughout the room. Master Splinter cast a serious look over each of his sons; one that had Leonardo's head lowered in shame and Donatello's resentful fixation on Raphael left gaping at the floor. Satisfied, Master Splinter supplied his own trained glower at the retreating Raphael. "If you are going to bed, my son, I suggest you speak with Michelangelo before doing such a thing." Splinter gathered the sinewy strands of his beard with one hand. "After all, it would be unfair for you to rest easy while your brother suffers from his injuries."

"Hai, Sensei." Grateful for the pardon, Raphael dashed from the room and away from the heavy atmosphere that his brothers so graciously provided. Away from their judging stares, he finally exhaled the heat building in his lungs along with the angry thoughts surging in his head without mercy - when he was suddenly met with a burst of blinding white light. He turned his attention to the TV just as an explosion lit up the dreary Gotham City hospital, silhouetting a mutilated patient with one finger still firmly planted on the detonator. Mikey cheered from his seat, but his high-pitched battle cry was unusually meek and lifeless; his fist pump falling halfway.

For a moment, Raphael just stood there, staring solemnly at the back of his little brother's head. Deciding what would be the best course of action with the least painful consequence between the two, he chose three. Nothing. Honestly, the last person he wanted to talk to about what he did was the one he'd done it to. Raphael avoided seeing his brother in his beaten state since the accident that morning. The puncture wounds and bruising not once entering his field of vision as Leonardo gathered Michelangelo into his arms and brought him to "safety." It was easier to imagine the wounds weren't as bad when he couldn't see them.

Or so he thought. Mikey may have been the most imaginative brother in their family, but imagination was like emotion - personal and prevalent. Raphael knew all too well that his emotions often got ahead of him - as did the habit of considering the worst case scenario like a true Edward Murphy. He couldn't get the rhythmic drip of blood out of his mind no matter how hard he tried to bottle it.

"Raph?" Raphael turned stiff as stone when Mikey started twisting his upper body to get a look at his older brother. Nearly choking when Mikey's swollen eye twitched in pain, a hand moving to clutch the bandaged side of his plastron. It looked like he had a golf ball in his mouth. "Dude, you're justh in time for the enphing."

Well, this seemed as good a chance as any. "Uh, Mike?" The red turtle absentmindedly scratched the back of his neck. "I want you to know that, earlier in the dojo, I didn't...-It wasn't like... -What I'm trying to say is-"

"I don'th wanna hear ith, Raph," Mikey waved off the obvious attempt at an apology with his free hand, his playful expression becoming surprisingly serious. "Let'sth justh forget ith happhened and mooph on."

At those words Raphael inhaled sharply and held it out of fear. That should have been relieving to hear from Mikey; Forgiveness was what he came out here for, what he wanted, and it sure as hell sounded acceptable. But...Something about hearing them from his little brother broke his heart. Why? Was it that Mikey's forgiveness wasn't comforting as much as it was totally accepting? Was violence something that Mikey had just grown to expect from Raphael?

"I don't understand."

"Wasth harph to understandth? It'sth over, so justh let ith go and watch the moophie with me."

"You're not…-I expected a little more than that, Mikey." Raph said with a dark edge to his tone.

"What do ya mean?" Asked Michelangelo, turning his attention back to the television set. He rolled his squared shoulders back into the couch cushions tucked behind his shell. "It wasth an assthident."

Drip, drip, drip.

"Y-yeah. But…" This was it. This was the part when Raphael broke down before Michelangelo, popped a poetic hand and poured his guilt upon the iron slab. A strong, confident speech boiled beneath the surface of his ready and bleeding heart like volcano about to erupt. After all, it was he that was the unbreakable shield between his family and all danger that stood in their way to the top of the world. It was he that was meant to carry the candle passed the rushing waves and not the fist that snuffed the eager flame. He had failed, and instead, like a brainless orangutan with no purpose on this earth and no poetic bone in it's body, he stood there with a stupid look on his face. His mind raced for the right words to say but came up with nothing but a pitiful "I'm sorry."

"And I forgiveth you. End of story, righth?"

"Right." Raphael turned his head to see Donatello leaning against the kitchen doorway, a glass of water in one hand and a bottle of Valerian Root grasped tightly in the other. Raphael met his gaze and regretted it the moment he saw the loathing hazel orbs looking back at him. "End of story."

He snapped. He couldn't take this anger and guilt; he couldn't bare the intense hatred burning in his brother's eyes any longer. Before he realized he had even moved, Raphael was slamming his bedroom door shut and locking it behind him.

* * *

><p><strong>fricken lisps holy hell it's 3am and i just know this is gonna suck when i wake up in the morning. Anyway, looks like Mikey is ready to forgive Raph, but Raph isn't ready to forgive himself yet. Neither is Donnie. What could happen next that isn't already spoiled in the summary?! Will Splinter tame this bad seed before it destroys the world!? You'll just have to find out! Thanks for reading.<strong>


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